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Breaking Down the Roots of Ineffable
"Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness," wrote Frederick Douglass in his autobiography. Reading Douglass's words, it's clear that ineffable means "indescribable" or "unspeakable." And when we break the word down to its Latin roots, we see how those meanings came about. Ineffable comes from ineffābilis, which joins the prefix in-, meaning "not," with the adjective effābilis, meaning "capable of being expressed." Effābilis comes from effārī, "to speak out," which in turn comes from ex- and fārī, meaning “to speak.”
Examples of ineffable in a Sentence
Emily Olsen, New York Times, 16 June 2026
Psychedelic journeys might be too ineffable and too particular to a person’s individual consciousness for the methods of science.
—Ross Andersen, The Atlantic, 12 June 2026
Courtesy of the City of Orlando Overall, the leafy memorial’s open-space concept uplifts and seems to point skyward toward the ineffable.
—R. Daniel Foster, Forbes.com, 12 June 2026
Researchers tend to define consciousness loosely as the ability to experience—the subjective, ineffable feeling of being alive.
—Emma Gometz, Scientific American, 15 May 2026
See All Example Sentences for ineffable
Cite this Entry
“Ineffable.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ineffable. Accessed 23 Jun. 2026.
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ineffable
adjective
